Sweet Dominates Thursday Program at Knoxville

KNOXVILLE, Iowa (August 9, 2018) – Brad Sweet made a statement on Thursday with another dominating performance at Knoxville Raceway. Sweet backed up his standout run at the Capitani Classic by winning Thursday’s Toyota Qualifying Night during the 58th Annual 5-Hour ENERGY Knoxville Nationals presented by Casey’s General Stores. Sweet from Grass Valley, California charged from sixth starting spot on the opening lap to capture the lead before lapping up to 12th place in the A-Main in his Kasey Kahne Racing car.

Sweet used a pair of tune up races before Knoxville to fine tune their setup, which seems to be paying off at the Nationals.

“We come here to run the those races just to get prepared for these races,” said Sweet. “I thought the Capitani (Classic) obviously gave us a lot of confidence coming into tonight. We tried a few things at Oskaloosa. Honestly where we hit on it the best was in that pole shuffle. The car felt like that pole shuffle all night tonight. Its kind of right where we need to be.”

Mark Dobmeier took the lead at the green flag with Sweet splitting the cars of Rico Abreu and Terry McCarl to drive into second place by turn two. Coming off turn four on the opening lap Sweet drove by Dobmeier to take a lead he would never relinquish.

After a pair of cautions for Josh Schneiderman’s wall contact that also sent Jamie Veal to the work area and Sammy Swindell’s spin in turn four Sweet pulled away from the field with Abreu trying to keep pace in second spot. While racing with Dobmeier for position McCarl got up in the cushion in turn four, making a big save, but dropped several positions.

David Gravel made his presence known at that point with eight laps in from 13th starting spot to challenge for the third position.

Gravel was able to pull up to Abreu to challenge for second once after lap 10, but hooked the inside berm in turns one and two and allowed Abreu to drive away. Gravel took one more shot at taking second away from Abreu in slower traffic with five laps to go, but lapped traffic blocked Gravel’s lane and allowed Abreu to scoot away again.

Up front though it was all Sweet lapping through 13th place on the way to victory. Abreu, Gravel, Tim Kaeding, and Chad Kemenah rounded out the top five.